This is a question that has been a hot topic recently since the release of a study that showed a correlation between high blood levels of DHA (one of the omega 3 fats found in fish and omega 3 sups) and prostate cancer growth. I’m sure you aren’t he only one following the blog and my recommendations to take fish oil that has this concern. I had the same concerns when I found out about the study connecting the two so I did some research of my own.

Intermittent Fasting (IF) is a buzzword in health and fitness circles right now. The promise of sustainable fat loss, anti-aging benefits, and the logistical practicality for those with busy schedules has made IF a hot topic.

Calorie restriction as a weight loss strategy is a short-term solution at best, and one that has more negatives than positives.

Carb cycling is a sustainable and more effective approach to weight loss and weight management. In this blog I will explain what it is, how to do it, and lay out several different carb cycling programs so you can choose which one is best for you.

Sticking to a strict low calorie regimen while training hard is both physically and psychologically tough. Physically, you are hungry, tired, low energy, and if you restrict yourself too long you risk going into a state of overtraining because you haven’t given your body the support it needs to recover. If that isn’t bad enough, the psychological affects of calorie restriction; hunger, mood swings, decreased desire, impaired cognitive function and focus; are even worse.

Adding to the psychological burden is the fact that calorie restriction doesn’t work for very long. That has a spirit crushing effect when you are suffering and not seeing positive results. You begin to question your motivation and yourself. When you start questioning yourself the next steps are usually a binge that snowballs into a total loss of nutritional discipline and missed training days that cause you to feel fat, sluggish, bloated and “Blah.”

What is Carb Cycling?

Carb cycling is the planned alternation of carbohydrate intake that prevents fat loss plateaus by maintaining high metabolic function and workout performance. If you plan high carbohydrate days, known as “re-feeds” strategically your body never goes into starvation mode, thyroid function stays high, hunger stays in check, and muscles get glycogen refueling when they need it.

Carb cycling is a high-level nutrition strategy that requires planning. There are several different carb cycling strategies with varying degrees of difficulty and aggressiveness. Some of the strategies short term solutions, while others can be used as a long-term lifestyle approach.*

*I have been using a form of carb cycling and intermittent fasting (IF), which I will cover tomorrow in Easy Intermittent Fasting, for the last 4 months. In that time I have lost 12 lbs of fat, recorded several strength training personal records (PR’s), and had more energy than I can remember without feeling deprived. Keep in mind I also managed to do this with a baby that is now 3 months old (shout-out to my girlfriend, Lauren).

Benefits and How it Works

Sugar intake causes your body to make more fat cells, triggers those fat cells to fill up, and impairs cellular fat metabolism making it difficult for your body to utilize what is in those fat cells (Read Myth #4: Eating Fat Makes You Fat for more information on the factors that make you fat). Keeping blood sugar and insulin levels low is the key to losing and maintaining a healthy weight. Eating carbs also makes you retain water, three molecules of water per molecule of glucose (Read Guide to Labor Day Cheating). Too much carb deprivation however, can be difficult and may actually hinder performance.

The basic premise of carb cycling is that fat and protein intake are kept relatively constant while carbohydrate intake is varied. Throughout the cycle carbs are kept low or gradually depleted leading up to a high carbohydrate, “re-feed” period that lasts between 8 and 12 hours. Typically, fat and protein intake is scaled back on re-feed days unless hypertrophy is the goal. The bolus of carbs mitigates the need for energy from dietary fat and carbohydrates have a protein sparing affect so less dietary protein is required.

Carb Cycling Strategies

The following are several strategies. This is not a definitive list of every possible carb cycling plan.

Infrequent Re-feed

Schedule one re-feed every 7-14 days. The high carb re-feeds on this plan are the biggest because it the low-carb phase is the longest. This is the most aggressive plan and the one that will result in the fastest fat loss. Depending on the length of your low-carb phase this may not be sustainable long term. You may keep a relatively steady low-carb amount through the low-carb phase, but it may help to do a progressive decrease. A progressive decrease would look something like the following:

Day 1 Carbs = 60 grams

Day 2 Carbs = 50 grams

Day 3 Carbs = 40 grams

Day 4 Carbs = 30 grams

Day 5 Carbs = 20 grams

Day 6 Carbs = 0-20 grams

Day 7 Re-feed

Frequent Re-feed

Schedule a re-feed every 3-5 days. This is easiest and most sustainable program to follow. On this plan you can constantly tweak your ratio of low-carb days to re-feeds.**

Start with a ratio of fat day to re-feed ratio of 3:1. Ride that ratio for as long as you get results and then experiment with 4:1 and 5:1. If 3:1 is working there is no need to use a more aggressive plan until you need it. Don’t use a nuke if a fly swatter will get the job done.

Note: The re-feeds should be a little more moderate than the Infrequent Re-feed plan.

**Personally, I never refer to days as “low-carb” days. It has a negative connotation and it makes it sound like it is anything other than a normal day. The re-feed is the deviation from the norm, not the days that are low-carb. Instead I call them “fat days” because that is where I am getting my energy.

Strategic Cycling

This is a great approach for serious trainees, endurance athletes and those that travel frequently. This approach requires the most amount of planning because you are structuring varying carbohydrate intake days at different intervals in synchronization with intense training days, travel or special events. This is an extremely affective approach for someone who is organized.

To illustrate an example, lets say that I am training multiple energy systems 5 days a week. Two days a week I train two times a day, one intense strength training session and another steady state aerobic session in the evening. Also factor in that my best friend is getting married the third Saturday of the month. My goal is to lose 5 lbs of fat to improve my power-to-weight ratio, but I don’t want to hinder my performance.

In this scenario I would lay out my calendar for the month. I start by identifying the re-feed days. The obvious first choices are days that I am training twice in one day because I will want to support my training. Another obvious re-feed is the day of the wedding because I want to enjoy being social and taking part in the festivities. That will work out to 9 re-feeds out of 30 days in the month (8 days of “two-a-day” workouts and 1 wedding). That is a ratio of a little over 3:1 low-carb to re-feed days.

Let’s say for my goals I know I need to be close to a 4:1 ratio to fuel the amount of fat loss I want while keeping my performance high (note: a lot of this is done through trial and error). I will have to adjust by taking away a couple re-feed days when I train twice in a day.

Keep in mind that low-carb days may vary in the amount of carbs in this plan or any other carb cycing strategy. Let’s say that as a baseline anything less than 100 grams of carbs is a low-carb day. That baseline varies from person to person based on gender, muscle mass, training intensity, training duration, etc. That means there is variability from 0 to 100 carbs on your low-carb days. When I am looking at my training program and I see a particularly taxing workout I may plan for that day to be a low-carb day at the top end of the low-carb scale. On a low intensity day, for example a 60-90 minute aerobic workout on the ERG machine, I will plan to stay on the lower end of the scale.

Conclusions and Tips

There are infinite different ways to carb cycle. The best program will take some trial and error. Generally it is a good idea to periodically do a re-feed lasting several days or even a week if you have been carb cycling for a long period of time. This will ensure your metabolism stays high long term and you don’t impair thyroid function. Go into those extended re-feeds with the expectation that you will gain a little body weight. Look at that as taking a couple steps back so that you can move three steps forward in sustaining a healthy metabolism that makes it easy to burn fat if you ever have to get really lean for something.

In my experience carb cycling works best with some form of Intermittent Fasting (IF). Register for my blog updates at the bottom of this page to get my upcoming article Easy Intermittent Fasting.

It is important to maintain good food quality during the re-feeds. “High carb” does not mean “junk food.” Don’t let carb cycling become an excuse to binge on crappy food. Treating yourself from time to time is a good thing, but everything in moderation.

Labor Day is all about bidding summer farewell with BBQ and beers, but that is no reason to ruin the summer physique you have sculpted. If you are strategic you can actually make that Labor Day BBQ binge work in your favor to give you an even better physique than you have today! Life is all about balance. If you are training your butt off and eating well you are going to get results. That part is straightforward. There are however, days like Labor Day when social conventions and celebrations call for a deviation from the norm. Rather than going without or wasting what should be a fun day with friends obsessing about what you’re putting in your mouth you should learn how to cheat.

Knowing the Rules So That You Can Break Them

Put simply, sugar makes you fat. It also ages you, makes you retain water, and a host of other bad things. There is a ton of research and statistics to back me up on this, but I’d rather get on with teaching you how to cheat rather than convincing you that sugar is the issue. Let’s save the debate until someone sustains a hard body, six-pack, high levels of performance, and health all while eating a lot of sugar. Until then there is no argument.

There are two things that can stand in the way of you showing off all the chiseled muscle you’ve earned in the gym or out at the park.

trigger fat cells to start making more fat that from sugar in the blood stream that will then fill up the cells like a sponge saturating with water

Glucocorticoids stimulate fat cell division. Our bodies make glucocorticoids all the time, but levels rise during stress and sleep deprivation.

Unnatural, trans fats (vegetable oils) distort all cellular function to the point that it stops fat from being able to leave fat cells.

The following factors make you retain water:

The amount of water you retain is changing all the time. Everything from hormonal changes throughout the month like menstruation, carbohydrate intake, sodium intake, and water intake affect your water retention. Heck, even flying in an airplane will make you retain water.

Hormonal changes, especially menstruation, make you retain more water. Estrogen and cortisol, the stress hormone, in high levels will tend to cause more water retention. Men have fluctuations too. There have been studies that have shown that some men get so attuned with their partner’s menstruation cycle that they actually start retaining more water at the same time of the month.

Carbohydrates make you retain water. For every molecule of glucose stored in places like your muscles and liver, your body holds on to three additional molecules of water. This what gives your muscles that pumped up feeling after you drink a post-workout shake with a lot of sugar.

Contrary to what a lot of people think, a diet low in sodium will actually cause your body to retain more water because it is trying to hold on to the water and sodium it does have. Table salt affects water retention differently than sea salt or kosher salt. Salt your foods generously with sea salt, but avoid table salt.

Drinking too little water will make you retain water for the same reason as above.

Focusing too much on water retention will be an exercise in frustration, but there are several things you can do to minimize water retention, such as

Drink more water. Putting a pinch of sea salt in your water will help balance electrolyte levels.

Get more sleep, or at least better quality sleep to lower cortisol levels.

De-stress with exercise or meditation.

Eat less sugar.

Use more salt. It is common for people eating very clean diets with lot of unprocessed foods to actually be low in sodium if they aren’t salting their foods.

Intermittent fasting (IF) will keep your water retention very low during the fasting periods as long as you are drinking water. This is the best way to manage water retention. Register at the bottom of this blog to receive updates on new articles if you are interested in IF. I will be posting an article summarizing the reasons you should be practicing IF and how to get started.

How to Cheat for a Better Physique

Now that you know the rules, you are ready to break them. Cheating the right way is very liberating because it makes it easier to be social around your friends that don’t share your nutrition philosophy and allows you to eat some of the foods you miss. It does however, take planning if you want to minimize damage and actually get some benefit from cheating.

This week I am going to guide you through your Labor Day strategy, laying out a plan that you can follow anytime you have a cheat day on the horizon. I will explain the methods I employ and how to execute them leading up to a big cheat.

Register at the bottom of this blog or the top of any page on my site to receive my email updates throughout the week so you can follow along and learn how to do this in the future. I am also including a week of workout programming and a killer Pre-BBQ Workout that you will have you looking your best on Labor Day.

It’s hard to make a case for supporting conventional farming. Organic farming is better for your health, the environment and your local economy. With that said there are times when baby needs a new pair of shoes, or you just don’t have time or access to get the organics you want. So, when is conventional OK?

Here is my list of the Top 10 conventional foods that are ok to eat regularly:

1. Coconut

It probably has something to do with the thick shell, but several studies have been unable to detect pesticides in coconut products, including coconut water, coconut oil and coconut milk. This study from 2008 is a pretty extensive study that was unable to detect any pesticide residue in coconut oil.

The processing of coconut oil is pretty interesting. I learned a lot from this website. I recommend getting a virgin, unrefined coconut oil that has had the smallest amount of processing.

Coconut oil is a relatively cheap supplement if you buy online, both organic and conventional. You will get killed trying to buy this stuff at Whole Foods, especially the way I go through it at my house. I cook with it, slather it all over my face and body for moisturizer/SPF/insect repellant, and put it in my coffee.

2. Pineapple

Pineapples are another tropical fruit with a really thick shell that keeps pesticides from seeping into the meat of the fruit that we actually eat.

Avocados are a safe food that comes back with low pesticide residue. The one thing you do have to be aware of is that both organic and conventional avocado growers use large amounts of copper as a fungicide. Copper is an essential mineral, but it can be harmful in large doses. As long as you aren’t eating multiple avocados a day you should be fine.

5. Honey

The idea of organic honey is way cooler than it is practical. Keep in mind that bees can’t distinguish between conventionally grown flowers and organically grown ones, and that they have a range of five kilometers from their hive you can imagine that it is hard to verify exactly where they are grazing. Buy local when possible and if you can talk to the bee farmer do your due diligence to find out about where he thinks his bees have been, but don’t sweat the small stuff here.

You can only control the controllables.

6. Grapefruit

Grapefruit are the only citrus that ranked well in my Hierarchy of Fruit because they have a low glycemic load. According to the EWG’s Clean 15 List they are also very low in pesticide residue. Just don’t go messing it up by eating it with table sugar on top!

7. Asparagus

The difference in price between organic and conventional asparagus is so ridiculous that it is hard for anyone to justify buying organic. The good news is that asparagus is also one of the cleanest vegetables.

8. Eggplant

Eggplant are consistently found to have the least amount of pesticide residue. I can’t find much info on this one, but the facts are facts.

9. Sweet Potato

Since sweet potatoes are tubers that grow underground farmers don’t usually spray their leaves that grow above ground. Even if they do, research suggests that it doesn’t get into the part that we eat. The only thing to be concerned about with sweet potatoes is the fungicide bath that some of them are dunked in after harvest. Simply peeling the skin will get rid of most of that fungicide.

I still buy organic sweet potatoes if they are available and a reasonable price, but I don’t sweat it if they aren’t. I'm from Louisiana so sweet potatoes are in my blood, organic or not.

10. Farmed Oysters, Clams and Mussels

These ocean dwellers, called bivalves, are identical to wild ones. They aren’t fed any GMO feed or sprayed with any pesticides. There is no point in searching out organic here.

Other than helping out grocery store checkers and annoying me when I’m washing produce, are those stickers on my fruit and veggies good for anything?
It turns out that those stickers called PLU codes, or price lookup numbers, can actually be very informative when you are making buying decisions.

Cracking the Code

- A four-digit PLU code tells you the produce is conventionally grown, meaning conventional chemicals like pesticides were used.

- A five-digit code starting with a 9 applies to organically grown produce.

- A five-digit code starting with an 8 identifies the item as genetically modified (GMO), like seedless grapes or watermelon.

This is just one more tool in your bag to help you make better decisions that optimize your SLAPP!

A grocery budget is like any other budget. You have to know where to spend and where to save to maximize your dollar, except in this case you also want to optimize your health and fitness.
In Why Buy Organic I talked about what you are getting and more importantly what you are not getting when you pay the extra money for organic food.

There isn’t much of a debate left on if organic food is better for you, but you still may be debating whether or not you can afford it. Since you know I’m a ranking geek I created another hierarchy of the 12 most important foods to buy organic. I call it my Dirty Dozen.

Hierarchy of Organic Foods

1. Baby food

Babies are most susceptible to the hormone disrupting affects of pesticides. There systems haven’t had the necessary time to develop defenses against xenoestrogens and the other nasties associated with conventional food.

2. Full fat dairy

Raw, organic dairy is always my preference for a multitude of reasons that I talked about in Myth #2: the Milk Myth. Think about it this way…You wouldn’t take steroids, anti-biotics and drink pesticides if you were breast-feeding would you? Then why would you put yourself on the other end of it?

3. Beef

When you eat an animal you are also eating everything that animal has ever eaten which means everything, both bad and good, is compounded. This compounding affect is called bioconcentration. The majority of pesticides and herbicides are fat-soluble meaning they accumulate in fat. Since animals have far more fat than plants you are avoiding more potential poisoning when you eat organic meat.

Bioconcentration works for the positive when you eat organic meat as well. Plants bioconcentrate nutrients from the soil, meaning a pound of grass, for example, has more nutrients than a pound of dirt in which it grows. Animals take this a step further. Their tissues bioconcentrate the nutrients the grass takes from the soil and the nutrients the grasses manufacture.

It’s also important to note that organic, grass-fed beef is high in CLA, an anti-inflammatory omega 3 fatty acid that tells our body to burn fat at a faster rate. Conventionally raised meat is high in omega 6, an inflammatory fatty acid that has been shown to cause cancer growth when ratios are high in relation to omega 3.

4. Chicken

For all the same reasons above and more. It’s been discovered that the fat soluble pesticides in chicken feed transfer really efficiently into chicken tissues we end up eating. Chickens are fed GMO corn and soy that has been sprayed to hell and back with Round-up, not to mention that arsenic has been found in conventionally raised chicken tissues.

5. Eggs

Read above. Fat-soluble pesticides transfer well into the egg yolks.

6. Leafy Greens

This one comes down to surface area. Leafy greens are 97% surface area that gets sprayed hard with conventional chemicals. A good washing isn’t enough to remove all the harmful toxins the vegetables soak up. Luckily, organic greens aren’t much more expensive than conventional.

7. Berries

Berries are subjected to some of the heaviest pesticide loads. If you also consider that berries have the highest concentration of secondary metabolites (e.g. antioxidants, polyphenols, and phytonutrients) that have been shown to be higher in organic berries that have had to fend for themselves you are getting a product that has far more good stuff and far less bad stuff.

8. Anything you eat regularly or large volume that aren’t on my clean list coming up tomorrow.

9. Apples

Conventionally grown apples come back time and time again as the produce that absorbs the highest level of pesticides that get transferred to us when we eat them.

10. Cucumbers

When they are in season organic cucumbers aren’t that much more expensive than conventional ones. Going in-season is always your best bet when you are on a budget.

11. Grapes

Grapes thin skin pesticides that are sprayed on them to be soaked up at high levels.

12. Tomatoes

Similar to grapes with the thin skin. Tomatoes are also very heavily sprayed in some regions.

Three for the road:

Celery

Peppers

Potatoes

Sometimes at the store it can be difficult to be sure exactly what you are getting in the produce section. Check out my article What Can PLU Codes Tell You to find out what those stickers on your produce mean.

Despite your best planning efforts you have just reached a fork in the road at the grocery store and you don’t feel confident on which road to take.
You assessed your food stocks at home and made a grocery list using The Hierarchy of Carbohydrates. Being a good planner, you also have a grocery budget in mind, which is where things get complicated.

Do you save money buying conventional or take the path less traveled and buy organic? Is organic really all it’s cracked up to be or is it a scam? Are you paying extra for more nutrition or is it all hype? Are some conventional foods ok?

These are all great questions that you should be thinking about when you make the choice to be, or not to be…ORGANIC.

I’m going to answer those questions in short order and then get down to which foods are the most important to buy organic in my Dirty Dozen and why. This will be your nutritional and financial road map at the grocery store.

Truth, Hype, and Why Stanford Will Never be the Real Ivy League

Eating organic takes commitment. The extra financial commitment is obvious. If you are really diligent about buying organic there can also be an extra commitment of time and effort to even finding organic food.

There are those that argue that organic food isn’t more nutritious than conventional food and that you are paying extra money for nothing. I will cover where that argument came from and how they missed the mark to give you definitive guides for budgeting your money, time, and energy so that you can maximize your SLAPP (Strength, Longevity, Athleticism, mental & physical Performance, and Power-to-Weight Ratio).

What am I getting for the extra money?

A 2012 Stanford study did a meta-analysis on the nutritional content of organic foods vs. conventionally grown foods. They concluded that there is a lack of evidence supporting that organic foods have a higher nutritional content than conventional.

There are several critics of the Stanford study who say there were mistakes made and that many nutrients were overlooked/undervalued by the Stanford group. Dr. Kirsten Brandt, an agricultural scientist, is one of those critics who conducted her own meta-analysis that included many of the same studies that Stanford used.

Highlights of Brandt’s conclusions (aka, what you are getting for the extra money):

Stanford researchers chose to “include [nutrients] where the difference was smallest to begin with” while omitting others…Strike 1, Stanford.

The Stanford study concluded there was no difference in flavanol content, which contradicted Brandt’s findings. A closer look showed that the Stanford researchers merely misspelled the word flavanol. That’s a mistake that minimized one of the major benefits of organic produce…Strike 2, Stanford.

Organic produce has significantly higher levels of Vitamin C.

Organic produce has significantly higher levels of “secondary metabolites,” which the Stanford study either totally ignored or overlooked depending on which ones we are talking about. Secondary metabolites include antioxidants, polyphenols, flavanoids and phytonutrients. For plants they serve as the defense mechanisms against pests, fungi and other plants that would threaten them. When a plant isn’t sprayed with conventional pesticides it is forced to make more secondary metabolites to defend itself, which is why organic produce has a significantly higher content. For humans that eat them, they are one of the major health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables that are unique to these two food groups…Strike 3, Stanford.

More importantly, what am I NOT getting for the extra money?

Eating organic has never been about getting more nutrients for me. It is about not getting all the conventional pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones and antibiotics that can affect health, metabolism or a child’s development. These chemicals are toxic, forcing our liver and immune system to work overtime, which takes energy away from other areas like proper digestion, cognitive function, fat metabolism, ATP production, and tissue repair. They also mimic estrogen activity in our bodies.

“[Conventional] meat and dairy is loaded with hormones and conventional produce is sprayed with pesticides, all of which virtually mimic estrogen activity in our bodies.”

- Ori Hofmekler, The Anti-Estrogenic Diet: How Estrogenic Foods and Chemicals are Making You Fat and Sick

Real Talk about pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and xenoestrogens.

If weight loss is your goal you will want to steer clear of conventional meat and produce because they are packed with estrogenic chemicals that bind to estrogen receptors in fatty tissue, which increases estrogen levels and activity. Extra estrogen increases the size of the estrogen-sensitive fatty tissue. As the fatty tissue grows it produces even more estrogen, which continues a vicious cycle! There is a good chance that the stubborn fat you can’t lose despite your consistent training and your best efforts at achieving a calorie deficit is linked to estrogen dominance brought on by estrogenic chemicals in your food (I’ll have to tackle the calorie-in, calorie out stuff in another article). Check out The Anti-Estrogenic Diet for an in depth breakdown of the harmful affects of estrogen dominance and how you can avoid it through diet and lifestyle changes.

If you care about longevity you should keep in mind that the above listed estrogenic chemicals have been shown to cause cancer and increase the rate at which cancerous cells grow. There was also a recent study that found drug-resistant bacteria in half of the conventional raised meat in the US due to the antibiotics those animals are given.

If you care about your unborn baby’s physical and mental development you will probably be interested to find out that significant prenatal exposure to conventional pesticides causes brain abnormalities that negatively impact future cognitive function, reflexes, and is linked to ADHD.

If you care about your newborn’s health and development, you should know that they are far more susceptible to the harmful affects of pesticides, especially the ones that disrupt hormone function. Infants, like my 3-month old daughter Ryan, are ridiculously cute and loveable, but they are also pretty helpless. Their immune and digestive systems still have a lot of maturing to do before they can fight off xenoestrogens.

If you care about the environment and the animals we share Earth with you should know that conventional farming is responsible for untold damage to our soil and the air we breath, the unethical and inhumane treatment of animals, and one of the biggest contributors to the greenhouse affect.

Where do you go from here?

Hopefully, this has presented you with the information you need to walk the road less traveled with confidence. I realize the extra commitment it takes because I live it every day. I am by no means a rich man and time and energy are limited balancing my clients, my family, and owning a gym, but we make it work because we feel it’s important. When you place importance on something you find a way to make it work.

Like you, I work hard to support my family. We live on a budget and I know how great it is to find ways to spend money without having to sacrifice health and fitness. That’s why I created a road map for you to go with all this information. Check out my Dirty Dozen: The 12 Foods You Should Always Buy Organic and my upcoming article on which foods are ok to save money on by eating conventional. Register for my newsletter at the bottom of the page so you don’t miss out.